BREAKING: Another Trump Enemy Now in Legal Crosshairs After Criminal Referral From Congress
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The House Judiciary Committee referred ex-CIA Director John Brennan to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution on Tuesday for making “numerous willfully and intentionally false statements” to Congress — putting another rival of President Donald Trump in danger of being prosecuted.
Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH), in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, said Brennan helped push bogus claims that Russia “aspired to help” Trump win the 2016 election, based in part on the Steele Dossier. The Federalist was the first outlet to report the committee’s criminal referral on Tuesday.
Brennan, according to the letter, lied several times when testifying before the Judiciary Committee in May 2023. That included saying he was “not involved in analyzing the dossier at all,” and that he had not seen the dossier until after the 2016 election.
Jordan said that is false, and that the CIA was not only involved in pushing for the unfounded dossier claims to be included in a 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), but that Brennan, as The Federalist put it, “overrode the objections of CIA officials concerned about its inclusion in the assessment due to its lack of substantiation.”
“Making false statements before Congress,” Jordan wrote, “is a crime that undermines the integrity of the Committee’s constitutional duty to conduct oversight.”
Later in his letter, Jordan said recently declassified documents from National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard show Brennan teamed up with another Trump enemy, ex-FBI Director James Comey, to try and make Trump look like he colluded with Russia.
“Brennan’s assertion that the CIA was not ‘involved at all’ with the Steele dossier cannot be reconciled with the facts,” the letter said. “As the newly declassified documents show, a CIA officer drafted the annex containing a summary of the dossier; Brennan made the ultimate decision, along with then-FBI Director James Comey, to include information from the dossier in the ICA.”
Tuesday’s letter comes as Comey is facing a federal case brought by the Justice Department; he was charged with making a false statement to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding. Two other Trump foes — New York City Attorney General Letitia James and former National Security Advisor John Bolton — were also indicted earlier this month.
Brennan was the director of the CIA from 2013 to early 2017, when President Trump’s first term in office started. Trump revoked Brennan’s security clearance in 2018 and called him a “loudmouth, partisan, political hack.”
